


Thoughts at the Brink of Madness and Beyond

by Dustbunnygirl



Category: Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-07
Updated: 2008-04-07
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8005714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dustbunnygirl/pseuds/Dustbunnygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> How many times do I have to die before it’s enough?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thoughts at the Brink of Madness and Beyond

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** Thoughts at the Brink of Madness and Beyond  
>  **Fandom:** Torchwood  
>  **Pairing:** none  
>  **Character(s):** Jack  
>  **Rating:** PG-13 for slightly disturbing imagery and character death  
>  **Word count:** 973  
>  **Warnings:** Character death. Set during the events of 2.13 (Exit Wounds), so should be considered spoilery for that. May induce moments of claustrophobia (I’m not claustrophobic but it made me twitchy writing it).  
>  **Disclaimer:** I own nothing. I’ve borrowed my toys from Auntie Beeb and Uncle Rusty’s toy box and fully plan on eventually giving them back someday, when I’m tired of them. (And at least I won’t break them as bad as YOU did, Uncle Rusty. For SHAME!)  
> 

There’s no counting, no keeping track of the days or the deaths or the years. Nothing but blackness, nothing but dry earth crowding out the air, filling my mouth, my ears, my nose, my eyelids. Every breath is full of the smell of dank, rotted earth, the taste of generations of decay trickling down from above and a million choked screams. No room to flail or scratch or kick or dig, even if I had time between the first gasp of returning life and the last futile attempt at breathing anything but dirt and darkness. My hand tries to tighten around the ring resting on my chest and barely has the room. I clutch it like a lifeline and wonder how many more times I have to gag on my own panic before it all just ends.

Doctor, why couldn’t you just fix me!

**

You never notice when you’re letting a handful of dirt sift through your fingers just how heavy it is, how much weight those tiny grains possess when you pile them one on top of another on top of another on top of a-

You don’t notice until you’re surrounded in it, covered in it, and the full weight of the world – literally – is pressing down on you. The first time I felt every rib snap and bone crumble, I screamed. All I got for my trouble was a quicker throatful of dirt. Now I hardly notice the pain anymore. What’s the point? Noticing it won’t stop it, screaming into the dark won’t speed it up, make it hurt less. It’s better to just pretend I’m numb. Things break and register on an almost clinical level, catalogued as part of the countdown to death.

First my nose. Snap.

Third rib. Snap.

Sternum. Snap.

Thigh bone.

Big toe.

Snap.

**

It’s everywhere. In every nook, every pore, every hollow it can find. Try to blink and it’s in my lashes. Try to scream and it’s on my tongue. I don’t have blood anymore, just thick, viscous soot slithering through my veins, seeping out the corners of my eyes as the futility and madness wrings impossible tears out of dry sockets.

It is all. There is nothing but the black and the rot and the stench and the silence and it’s worse than death. I ache for the second my lungs give out and oblivion takes me because I can’t feel the dirt under my fingernails anymore, between my teeth anymore, clogged deep into my ears anymore. There’s nothing on the other end and I welcome the nothingness because at least it’s peace. I try to breathe it in more, force the inevitable on faster, struggle just to chase the air out of my lungs just a fraction sooner because death is better than this!

All the philosophers and poets who say drowning is so peaceful, a lover’s embrace dragging you gently to the dark, are full of shit. Suffocation is slow and endless and will drive you slowly mad before it kills you. It’s not a coward’s way to die and damn it I am a coward.

_I wish I’d never met you, Doctor. I was better off a coward._

Not was. Am. I **am** a coward.

**

Death cheats. I figure out the rules and it changes them. I hasten to it and it pulls further away. I scream and rail and suck it down, jam my mouth full of peat and worms and sand just to bring it on that much quicker and it laughs at me as it dances out of reach. Oblivion keeps getting shorter now. A blink of peace, a beat, a second’s worth of absolution and then I’m gasping again. And Hell? Hell just keeps lasting longer.

And it’s not fair. Not the cold, not the pain, not the mouthfuls of dirt, not the endless silence broken up only by the sound of my rambling, disjointed thoughts. Are these words? Is this my voice? How long before none of it means anything anymore? How mad do I have to get before it’s all just noise and none of it makes sense?

How many times do I have to die before it’s enough? When’s it enough, Gray?

WHEN!

**  
Leg bone. Snap.

Hipbone. Snap.

Middle finger.

Index finger.

Thumb.

Sna-

Light. I only recognize it because it’s the absence of the dark, blinding and bright and I squint to keep my eyes from burning away under the glare. My lungs don’t know what to do with the air they’re given. I cough up centuries’ worth of grit as hands drag me out of the hole and leave me on the surface, gasping.

Everyplace they touch is pain; numb nerves don’t know any different, can’t tell soft from rough, soothing from hateful, tender from cruel. It’s all just touch after millennia without it and I don’t know how to read it anymore. All I want to do is roll away from it, roll back into the cold where nothing touches, where everything touches, and I don’t know the difference between absence and presence because it’s all the same.

I hear sound, so much sound, all of it outside of my head and only vaguely familiar. One deep, one light; one gruff, one lilting, familiarity in the tones but it’s buried under two thousand years of dirt and silence and madness. It’s too much, too loud, too shrill and sharp and it _hurts_ and I wish it would stop. Please make it stop. I’m begging you, please…

**

It takes my brain awhile to remember what words are - to remember that the “Jack” being called out over and over again is supposed to be my name.

Jack. I am Jack. My name is Jack and I am Jack and I …

_Gray_

…have work to do.


End file.
